On Monday night I kept getting phone calls from my boss, though I continued to ignore them. The last one came at around 10pm. I muted the ringer and fell back down into my pillow. The sound of a motorcycle ripped through the air and then I fell asleep.
It was around this time, about 10:15pm, that a man named Nelson Ramirez was sitting in his car in the 14900 block of Vanowen Street in Van Nuys. Nelson was listening to music. He was 20 years old.
Several people saw two Hispanic men walking side by side. The men approached Nelson's car, pulled out guns and shot several times. This was a gang killing. Nelson Ramirez died in the hospital.
The police department doesn't know why Ramirez was killed. He wasn't a gang member. He wasn't antagonistic. He was listening to music in his car when death came calling, and in its wake, an avenue of questions.
Why did Nelson Ramirez die? Why did he have to die? There must be a reason. Was it the music? Surely it wasn't an accident.
We'll all sleep better at night without the nagging, ringing possibility that this deliberate delivery of the end was not out of control, that there was some method so that the rest of us can avoid this kind of death.
Was it because Ramirez was Hispanic?
It couldn't have been purely random, could it?
An ant crawled over my big toe and crossed the length of my futon to the floor on the other side.
